The Spacetime Pool Read Free

paper. It opens onto another
sheet. I suppose you could say the sheets are alternate universes. But they
aren’t real.”
     
    “They seem quite
real,” he said. “When you went through the gate, it threw off my calibration. I
had set it to come out at my camp.” More to himself than to her, he added, “I
hadn’t actually expected to leave the camp.”
     
    “Tell you what,”
Janelle said. “How about you and your brother find wives here? I’ll just drop
out of the picture.” She thought of what he had said about his father. “Unless
you’re already married. Because if you’re pulling this bit looking for some fun
on the side, forget it.”
     
    “Neither Maximillian
nor I is wed. I have had concubines, though not in some years.”
     
    “Concubines!”
     
    He grinned. “You don’t
like that?”
     
    Just like a guy, to
be pleased because he thought she was jealous. “Oh, cut the sexist crap.”
     
    He had the audacity
to look intrigued. “What does ‘sexist’ mean? Is it to do with love-making?”
     
    “No. It means I
should go back to Tennessee.”
     
    His voice softened. “This
world would be much poorer, to lose such beauty as yours.”
     
    “Don’t.” For some
reason, it angered her that he actually sounded sincere with that line. Or
maybe the anger masked her fear. Right now, he could do whatever he wanted with
her.
     
    “Max wouldn’t give
you a choice.” He was no longer smiling. “If not for the prophecy that we would
die if we killed you, he would probably execute you on sight.”
     
    An unwelcome memory
jumped into her mind: she had learned about the deaths of her family from the
media. Someone with too much ambition or too little compassion had leaked the
story, sensationalizing it as an “execution.” Janelle had been visiting a
girlfriend in Virginia during a school break, and the news had gone public even
as government officials scrambled to find her.
     
    Dominick spoke
quietly. “Your face looks like a dark cloud passed over it.”
     
    She shook her head,
unable to answer.
     
    “I do regret all
this.” He stood up and lifted his hand, inviting her to leave the glade. “Are
you rested enough to go on? Let me at least bring you to my home, as my honored
guest.”
     
    Janelle didn’t want
to be his guest. But she was beginning to absorb that this might be real, and
she doubted staying in the glade would help her escape.
     
    The Sun was setting
when they emerged from the screen of bushes. The world had darkened and
blurred, as if they saw it through old glass on the seashore, brown and rounded
by tumbling waves.
     
    Dominick set off
along a faint path scattered with leaves. They had only gone a few yards,
though, when he turned to her and paused, listening. Then he spoke in an urgent
whisper. “ Run. ”
     
    She took one look at
his face—and broke into a sprint.
     
    * * * *
     
    III
     
    The Transform
Palace
     
    Janelle raced through
the woods, and Dominick’s boots thudded behind her. Then she tripped on a
jutting rock, and he plowed into her. Holding onto her, he lurched past a
tangle of wild berry bushes and fell behind a large boulder and the bushes. He
twisted in mid-air and landed on his back, cushioning their fall so she came
down on top of him. Her breath went out in a rush. It happened so fast, she had
no time even to tense up.
     
    For one second, he
held her in a vise-like embrace. Then he sat up fast, rolling her off his body
and onto her stomach. She pushed up on her hands, but when he laid his palm on
her back, she stopped with her head raised. He crouched next to her, his knife
drawn, his head tilted as if he were listening to the distant waves. Her surge
of adrenalin sharpened her hearing, and she caught the shushing of hooves on
sand. Dominick raised his dagger in a single sure motion, the blade glinting in
the last rays of the Sun.
     
    Hooves stamped
nearby. Janelle stayed silent, though surely they could hear the thud of her
heart.